From one state to another, boards of trustees, legislatures, and governors are implementing policies designed to increase output and efficiency in public colleges and universities. Many such policies reflect the agenda of the National Governors Association's Complete to Compete initiative, which seeks to increase completion rates without…

Within higher education in the United States and Canada, calls to promote global awareness and global literacy among undergraduate students have become increasingly urgent. Yet, there are multiple challenges in achieving these outcomes. One challenge lies in making this "literacy" authentic and relevant for diverse students aspiring to be…

In this article, the author offers reflections on the impact of mobile technology for liberal education. These reflections are based on his own experience of incorporating iPads in his communication courses during the 2010-2011 academic year. As a member of an interdisciplinary faculty learning community on the use of mobile tablets, he explored…

Higher education is not only about money. At whatever appropriate cost as borne by whomever, it is supposed to provide life-long value to the students and to society. Yet some critics now complain that in the current system, with its rising costs, students are not in general learning much if anything, and there is a good deal of data to suggest…

In this article, the authors explain why examining the way institutions model democracy on campus is an important, but often overlooked, step in advancing students' democratic learning. First, they note how a decline in shared governance produces an educational environment that adversely affects students' civic inclinations and agency. Next, they…

The direction of innovation and reform in science education is moving toward a student-centered learning paradigm that is organized around core concepts and competencies, and engaged through empirically supported instructional practices. What forms of assessment would support these educational aims? Several characteristics of a compatible…

Curricular innovation is at the center of the challenges many colleges and universities face as they seek to help students address more successfully than previous generations the complex, multi-faceted, systemic challenges of global climate change, population growth, loss of biodiversity, environmental justice, toxic wastes, and food insecurity.…

Since March of 2009, the Utah System of Higher Education has been a partner with the Lumina Foundation for Education in the Tuning USA project, Lumina's first experiment in introducing the European concept of degree "tuning" to American academia. Developed in the European Union as a way to create common degree standards across multiple nations,…

The conversation in higher education has shifted, moving from a focus on what students know to a focus on whether they know how to think and, more importantly, toward the goal of providing skills needed for living and working in the twenty-first century. In this article, the authors present national evidence regarding the impact of intentional…

Much has been written about higher education's increasing reliance on contingent academic labor over the last few decades. The narrative, which includes differing accounts of what, or who, is most to blame, has been well rehearsed: the increase came in slow and steady waves tied to significant political and economic events, including postwar…

The widespread sense that faculties at US colleges and universities need to be more diverse is tied to the sense that the students at US colleges and universities have become more diverse, which indeed they have. The increase in diversity in higher education over the last forty years has been matched by an increase in wealth. Thus the question…

Although the author has been teaching for over a quarter century, he was never trained in, nor truly understood, "outcomes assessment." He regarded it as a task to be completed for an outside accreditor that had little relation to his real "liberal arts" goals for students. Those goals include teaching critical self-awareness, developing…

Participants in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest-Teagle Collegium on Student Learning examined recent work in the cognitive sciences, tested the theories through classroom interventions and experiments, and sought to improve student learning through the application of metacognitive practices. They focused especially on the importance of…

In this article, the authors discuss some manifestations of agency in the faculty career and the potential importance of its role in faculty career development. They define faculty professional growth as a change occurring in a person throughout his or her career and life that allows him or her to bring new and diverse knowledge, skills, values,…

In this article, the authors discuss contemporary challenges. David Berry offers advice on teaching the humanities at a community college; Gerald Graff examines how the traditional organization of universities undermines student learning; and Cary Nelson considers the effects on the humanities of the increasing reliance on contingent faculty.